The Open Book Festival gave me a community.
In 2025, I found myself facing an identity crisis. I believed deeply in a world that was more equal and just, but I felt increasingly disconnected from the work I was doing. Every morning, I showed up to my 9-to-5 job, trying to contribute towards creating better systems and better lives, but the inequality around me remained painfully visible.
I would scroll through social media and see stories of wars ravaging communities, people struggling to make ends meet, and families in my own city going hungry. I often thought about the children who went to bed without a meal and imagined their mothers comforting them, promising that tomorrow would be better. I thought about my own childhood, growing up with a single working mother, and how those struggles had multiplied across our city.
But what troubled me most was that I felt alone in caring about these issues.
I could see people speaking about justice, inequality, and change online, but I wanted something more human. I wanted to sit across from someone, look them in the eye, and ask: “What are you doing about this? How can we do this together?” I wanted to know that the questions I was asking were not just my own, but part of a wider search for something better.
Then I found the Open Book Festival.
Although the festival had existed for years, I had never attended before. When I looked through the 2025 programme, I felt something shift. The conversations reflected many of the questions that had been sitting heavily with me. I looked through the sessions and decided with my wife that we would divide the programme between us and attend as much as possible.
We did not know what we would find.
My first session was on youth unemployment. I attended conversations about the crisis facing men and questions around identity. I sat in a workshop on climate justice, thinking about the future world I wanted to see, a world that was not fractured by inequality and environmental destruction, but one that still offered hope for my young 12-year-old brother-in-law, who I love and care about.
I listened to authors from across Africa speak about experiences, struggles, and hopes that felt close to my own. Then I found myself not only listening but participating. I shared my own thoughts as part of the audience, and afterwards people came to speak to me about what I had said. I also found myself approaching others, wanting to continue conversations beyond the walls of the festival.
Slowly, session by session, something changed. Hope started returning.
After every event, I would look for my wife in the corridor, and talk about everything that had happened. I would talk about the speakers, the ideas raised, and the people I had met. She would share her own experiences and the things she had learnt from the sessions she attended.
There was one word that kept coming up: belonging. That was what I had been searching for.
OBF helped me realise that my identity was not only shaped by the problems I saw around me, but also by the people I could stand alongside in trying to address them. It introduced me to people who were asking similar questions, challenging existing systems, and working towards the same kind of future I wanted to see.
The festival became a platform that gave me the courage to search further.
Years before, I had heard a story that you would never receive a response if you never sent a letter. OBF became the moment when I finally started sending those letters. I began reaching out, starting conversations, and looking for opportunities to contribute. The confidence I had been missing started to grow.
A year later, some of the people I met through OBF have become friends. I greet them when I see them. We continue conversations that started in festival rooms. They have given me space to explore what I believe in, what I want to do, and where I can contribute.
I arrived at the Open Book Festival searching for a community. I left knowing that one existed. More importantly, I left knowing that I had a place within it.
Through OBF, I found the courage to join civic associations, participate in my community, and start taking action in the spaces where I believe I can make a difference.
The Open Book Festival gave me a place where
I can belong.
-— Aliasgher Janmohammed
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